How Does Mcewan Use Narrative Techniques In Atonement

In his metafictional novel Atonement, Ian McEwan utilises narrative techniques to develop the central ideas of truth, war, and the desire to attain atonement. McEwan uses narrative structure to explore the nature of guilt and the courage required by one to atone for their wrongdoings, while he uses the interplay between narrative voices to explain how people have different interpretations of the truth. The narrative perspective of the character Robbie Turner is additionally employed to explore the nature and consequences of war, particularly the effect that it can have on a person’s respect for the value of life.

McEwan uses narrative structure to reveal certain truths throughout the novel about how the character Briony’s false witness statement
During Part Two, the reader learns that Robbie has enlisted in the army to shorten his prison sentence. When Robbie describes how during his trek in France a disembodied leg “small enough to be a child’s” was wedged in a tree which was “just in leaf,” McEwan symbolically explains to the reader how war remorselessly ends the lives of the young and innocent. Robbie’s perspective also reveals how Corporal Mace and Corporal Nettle, who are more experienced corporals in the army, merely made “a dismissive sound of disgust” when they saw the leg in the tree. This symbolically reflects how not only war itself is desensitised to the death of those “just in leaf,” but that war causes others to become desensitised to the wrongful loss of life. Furthermore, this idea is also expressed through the juxtaposition of the peasant farmer who was not “aware of the convoy” and continued to work “behind the plough” after the nearby village and fields had been bombed causing a “mother and child” to be “vaporised.” Robbie’s bitter reflection that “not everyone would be dead” further highlights the farmer’s desensitisation, particularly how war can change a person’s opinion on the value of other people’s lives and the injustice of killing innocent people. McEwan’s employment of Robbie’s insightful perspective to describe war and its consequences allows the
While narrative structure is used to explain how guilt as a result of dishonest conduct can last a lifetime, the interplay between narrative voices describes how often it is more than one person who is responsible for the interpretation of the truth. Robbie’s narrative perspective is used by McEwan to explore the complexity of war and the effects it has on those who experience and live through